Between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries English
peasants faced large income shocks relative to mean incomes. Innovations in
property rights over land induced peasants to respond by trading small parc=
els
of land as part of their risk coping strategy. The same period witnessed a
dramatic increase in inequality in the distribution of peasant landholdings=
. We
argue that these events are related. When agents are able to trade their pr=
oductive
assets to manage risk, wealth dynamics become unstable and generate increas=
ing
inequality over time. We analyze the effects of these dynamics in the conte=
xt of
medieval English land markets and peasant landholdings.